Maliseet Nation Conservation Council

Our Story

Maliseet Nation Conservation Council (MNCC) is an Aboriginal organization established under the Department of Fisheires and Oceans (DFO) AAROM program. We represent all six Maliseet First Nations (Madawaska, Tobique, Woodstock, Kingsclear, St. Mary’s and Oromocto First Nations) in the province of New Brunswick. It was first established in 2004 to collaborate on the management of aquatic resources and increase Maliseet First Nation participation in watershed management within our traditional territory, the Wolastoq (Saint John River) watershed and Bay of Fundy.

One of the MNCC’s major conservation missions is Species at Risk (SAR) program, which both gathers SAR data and builds stewardship capacity within our member communities. The program addresses vital issues pertaining to SAR in the trans-border watershed level. Over the past a few years, MNCC has collected, processed and preserved Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge (ATK) of Maliseet First Nations (MFN) that are useful for conservation SAR. MNCC has been running a trans-boundary process to formulate a management strategy for the Wolastoq since 2004 in collaboration with rights and stakeholders of the river in Canada and United States (US). We have so far conducted 3 cross boundary summits in Maine, Kingsclear and Madawaska and recently the process was officially recognized by federal agencies of Canada and US.